- Health Department have revealed proposals to help save nearly £8 million by next year
- They include reducing staff numbers and spending less on hospital food
- Cuts also include cutting patient travel subsidies and having fewer hospital beds at weekends
- Comment – Read what the JEP thinks below
CLOSING some hospital beds at weekends, cuts to patient travel subsidies and reducing spending on hospital meals are among the Health Department’s proposals to help save nearly £8 million by next year.
It was announced earlier this month in the draft Medium Term Financial Plan – which outlines the States’ spending and taxation strategy for the next four years – that Jersey faces a black hole of £145 million in its finances by 2019.
Cuts to public-sector spending have been identified as the key target for ministers to make up the shortfall, and they plan to make £90 million of cuts to Jersey’s civil service by 2019.
Despite the proposed cuts, ministers have identified spending on the Health Department as one of their priorities in the MTFP, with an additional £40 million to be allocated towards the department by 2019.
But following the release of an MTFP supplement, it has been revealed that the Health Department must find £7.6 million of savings through ‘sustainable efficiencies, service redesign and cost reductions’ by the end of next year.
Measures proposed so far include closing hospital beds at the weekend where possible, reducing the amount spent on food for inpatients, reducing staff and patient travel costs, reviewing the provision of patient transport, cutting management and administrative staff, and getting better value for money out of UK health services.
Deputy Geoff Southern, who sits on the Health and Social Security Scrutiny Panel, described the cuts proposed by the end of 2016 as ‘short-termist’.
He said: ‘What really upsets me is at election time they said they were going to invest more in the Health Department but after the election it’s cut after cut.’
Of the £40 million to be invested in the department by 2019 if the MTFP is approved by the States, £19 million has been allocated to meet increased demand, more than £3 million will be spent to support vulnerable families, £2 million on mental health services and £4 million each year to maintain the Health Department’s properties.
The States’ have allocated £3.8 million to the department for 2016 to boost growth areas, with key investment targets identified as children’s services, mental health services, opening new beds at the Samarès Ward, IT development and out-of-hospital services.
But the MTFP also stated that £30 million will be withdrawn from the Health Insurance Fund to cover investments over the next four years and the States plans to raise an extra £35 million a year through a new health charge to be introduced by 2019.
With regard to the proposed cuts, Deputy Southern said: ‘I have already had people complaining to me about cutting back spending on transport for patients – because they will have to take time off work and they can’t afford taxis.
‘If the food isn’t good and nutritious then the patients won’t get better. I don’t think the food at the moment is good enough.
‘And they speak about improving staff absences – how can you do that? If people are ill and they come in it will infect everyone else and make the problem worse – it’s short sighted.
‘And I would be interested to see if proposals for the remaining £3.1 million of cuts will be in place before the States vote on them in October.’
THE Council of Ministers is trying to sell a financial package of two halves.
With a black hole of £145 million looming, cuts, savings and efficiencies are being proposed to help balance the books.
But they also want to pump extra investment into Health, Education, the regeneration of St Helier and economic growth.
In the ministerial narrative, the two are supposed to find a balance that, if painful, is going to secure a prosperous future for the Island.
Much of the projected deficit, they say, is caused by extra investment rather than shortfalls in revenue.
But this story, let’s remember, started with a promise that taxes and cuts to front-line services would be a last resort.
We are into chapter two and much of chapter one seems to have been forgotten already.
In the catchily named Draft Annexe to the Medium Term Financial Plan 2016-2019, which was released on Friday, we find some of the detail about how cash will be saved in Health.
The plan includes bed closures, cuts to patient travel subsidies and reduced spending on hospital food – cuts, in other words, to services which directly affect patients.
But before the barricades go up and the letters start flying, what about the extra investment – the balance.
An allocation of an additional £40 million in health is proposed to be spent over the next three years.
So are the cuts being used to fund this extra investment?
Between 2016 and 2019, £30 million is being transferred from the Health Insurance Fund.
And there are plans to raise an extra £35 million a year with a new health tax from 2019.
Sleight of hand? Smoke and mirrors? Spin? Call it what you will, but it is not the balanced game of two halves we are being sold.
